Dr. Ronan Glynn:

The British variant concern seems to be predominantly around transmissibility, with no obvious impact on vaccines or on reinfection. There is some very early suggestion that the South African variant in particular, and perhaps the Brazilian variant, may have an impact in reinfection and may have an impact on the effectiveness of the currently available vaccines. I stress that this is very early, and we certainly need more evidence before we could conclude on that. Clearly, we must adopt a precautionary principle and the key now is to stop these variants from being imported here in the first instance.